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In spring 2006, I managed to take a close photo on the construction works of the first full-size Metro in Switzerland (see pic). The Lausanne metro line m2 was opened last October, so let’s have a look at the results via Flickr.

I am not implying here that a full-size metro is a clear sign of development and wealth, or that it would necessarily increase the quality of public transport. The real goal is to provide fast and comfortable transport options for the commuters, be it an efficient tram network (Basel, Zürich) excellent bike infrastructure (Gröningen, Copenhagen), or any combination. Metro-fetish per se is not a good thing. But this line seems to be a smart project.

In fact, the city never had a “regular” metro, but they do have a suburban line with a city centre terminus built in 1872, a light rail/supertram branded as Metro 1 connecting university campuses with the centre ville and another main line train station, and they used to have a cog-wheel railway (below on the left), which has now been lengthened and converted to rubber-tire metro.

Rubber tire railway was first pioneered in Paris after WWII. The idea (which sounds a bit odd at first, as it is combining the inefficiency of road transport with the constraints of a fixed track, similar to the trolley bus) proved to be efficient on the congested Paris lines, because the higher friction of tires allow higher acceleration, shorter breaking distance and therefore higher train frequencies. – In Lausanne, the challenge was the hilly terrain: the extreme elevationof as high as 12% were previously made possible only using cog wheels or cable cars.

For those who like useless world records: this is the steepest metro line in the World, Lausanne has just become the World’s smallest city with a full size metro system (next being Rennes), furthermore it is claimed to be the most modern metro system.

The new subway uses the technology of Paris Métro lines 1 and especially 14, there is no driving seat and stations are all having platform doors. The mostly underground line is 6 km long with 14 stations, end-to-end duration of 20 minutes and a frequency of 3 minutes in peak hours.

More pics on Lausanne rail transit (click here if you can’t see below):

Photos by Nelson Minar, fr.zil, hublera and me.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 18:35 and is filed under Lausanne, transit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.